


In My Veins

by HawthorneWhisperer



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 08:13:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4093585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawthorneWhisperer/pseuds/HawthorneWhisperer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x16 speculation.  Clarke has spent the last three months with her ghosts, but then someone who is all too real returns to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In My Veins

Clarke’s fingers burned and ached as she scrubbed her undershirt in the icy water.  Early March was a wretched time to do laundry, but she would make do.   **  
**

“You could have boiled the water,” Wells drawled from where he sat against the cave wall, directly below her painting of Finn.

“And you could have helped,” she said back with half a smile.  

“Kind of hard, being dead and all,” he replied and gave her that bright, wide smile she’d known her entire life.

“Fair enough.  And besides, boiling the water and waiting for it to cool properly would have taken forever.  It’s just a few things, anyway.”  Clarke squeezed her undershirt and took it out to the flat rock where her underwear was already spread.  The early spring sun was weak but shining straight on the rock, and with any luck, her things would be dry by evening. Going without underwear felt a little strange but she would manage just fine.

That’s what she did out here, after all.

She managed.

Just fine.

Maybe not everyone would see it that way, but for the first time in years Clarke felt at peace.  There were no secrets to keep here in the cave–no oxygen crisis, no need to pull a lever and kill hundreds of people with a single stroke, no need to do it again just weeks later.  For the first time since she stood in her family’s compartment, listening to her parents hiss about  _truth_  and  _chances_  and  _the greater good,_ Clarke didn’t have anyone else to worry about.

She was free, even if the price of freedom was solitude.  She dried her hands on a pelt and grabbed her knife as she set off to check her traps.

The woods were slowly coming alive now that the worst of winter had passed.  Trees had soft green buds on the tips of their branches and rabbits hurried out of the way as she walked her usual morning circuit.  She’d read about spring back on the Ark but now that she was here, watching new life take root after the frozen wasteland of winter, she understood why people thought there was a magic to spring.  Watching the forest reawaken was like watching a baby take its first steps–hesitant and stumbling but sweet all the same.

Her first two snares were empty, but her third had a fat rabbit with the glossy eyes of the dead.  She crouched and released it, grabbing it by the hindlegs the way Lincoln had showed her and walked back toward her cave.  The fur cape she’d made, painstakingly stitching together every hide in the flickering light of a fire each night, seemed almost too warm in the spring air.  Clarke had forgotten that it would get warm again.  She’d spent too many nights huddled under the pile of furs, shivering and alone.  The days bled together and she thought she might never again feel the warmth of the sun on her skin, but here spring was, proving her a liar once again.

She shed her cape outside the cave and got to work skinning the rabbit.  Her stores were running low and it took all her willpower not to roast and eat the entire rabbit right then.  She grabbed the skin and pulled it free from the muscles and set the pelt aside–she might not need it for her cape anymore, but spare rabbit skins would always be useful.  Maybe she would make herself a hat for next winter.  The cape had a hood but it fell back at the slightest gust of wind.  A hat would be better, she decided.

“You’re really planning on staying through next winter?”  Her father was sitting next to her, his legs crossed and his hands clasped.

“Can’t hurt to be prepared,” she said.  She couldn’t count on Lincoln to keep her secret forever, either.  She might need to move, and next winter she wouldn’t have his stores to keep her warm and fed.

“Your mom misses you,” her dad pointed out.  “I know she does.”

Clarke pursed her lips and started butchering the rabbit.  “That’s not the point.  This isn’t about her.”  Her father stayed silent while she finished and set the rabbit up to roast over her cooking fire.  The fat crackled and popped and she decided she needed to leave or else she would devour the rabbit before it was done.  She wiped the blood off her hands and slid the knife back into her belt.

There was a softness to the earth now that hadn’t been there just a few days ago.   _Spring thaw_.  She crouched near a green shoot just poking through the mud and looked closely.  “Wild onion,” Wells helpfully supplied.  “But too small to be worth picking just yet.”

“Yessir, Captain Earth Skills,” she replied with a mocking salute.  She stopped at the stream and broke through the thin crust of ice that remained on the edges to fill her bucket once more.  This one she would boil and let cool for drinking.  The thought of the rabbit waiting for her broke through the last of her resolve and she walked back to the cave.  _I’ll just have a late lunch and early dinner all at once_.  The mushy oat porridge she had for breakfast was long gone and in its place was the now familiar ache of hunger.

Clarke ate the rabbit with one hand and worked with the other, spreading her dark paint across the uneven, pockmarked walls.  It was different from when she drew in solitary.  The Ark walls were smooth and perfect, but part of her liked how the cave made shadows and brought new textures to her work.  It seemed more real, somehow.

Finn appeared, like he always did when she painted.  “Visited the Art Supply Store recently?” he asked with a smile.

“A couple of weeks ago.  I found some blue paint I overlooked last time.  Didn’t I tell you?”

“Must have slipped your mind.  This one’s good though.  Better than your portrait of me, anyway.”

Clarke smiled to herself.  “Your portrait is great.  Don’t complain.”

“My hair’s too short.  I liked it better long,” he whined.  Clarke ignored him and stepped back, frowning, and then added a few more strokes to the downpour she was creating.  Bellamy stood in the center, still in his stolen guard uniform, his eyes closed and his mouth open in what passed for a smile from him in those days.

She hated him then, and that seemed so foreign to her now.  Hating Bellamy.  It didn’t seem possible anymore, even though in all likelihood he hated her.  He begged to her stay and she left anyway, and Bellamy was not someone who  _begged_  easily.  Hopefully he would understand one day.  That no matter what he said, the guilt of Mount Weather was hers and hers alone.  She couldn’t stay and watch him try to shoulder her pain, not when he had so much of his own.

It was better this way.

She finished the rabbit and went outside to grab her underthings in the fading twilight.  As she suspected they were dry and she quickly shrugged out of her clothes and then back in before the evening chill settled it.  She turned to Finn, leaning nonchalantly against the wall.  “So you want your hair longer?”  she asked and grabbed her brushes.

She worked while darkness fell, completely absorbed.  She glanced to her left out of habit and then turned back to her painting of Finn, unsurprised that Bellamy was there, watching her.

He was almost always there, if she was honest.  He stood just behind her shoulder when she checked her snares and he lounged on her pile of furs while she painted.  He sat at the cave entrance while she bantered with Finn and teased Wells.  He had been there while she sat on the sun-warmed rock, gutting her rabbit and arguing with her father.

But he never said a word.  

Wells had spoken first when she frowned at some berries and tried to decide if they were edible.  (They were).  Her father was next, sitting next to her at her fire one night as she cried into her knees.  Finn had come last–he appeared when she finished his portrait, smiling and teasing like she hadn’t had to slide a knife between his ribs.

But Bellamy had been there from the start, silent and watchful.

“Have you been here all this time?”

At his voice, low and raspy, Clarke startled and almost dropped her paintbrush.  She whirled and stared, because Bellamy never came to her like this.  He always looked like he had back at the dropship, with a ratty blue t shirt and a heavily patched jacket.  Sometimes, on nights she refused to think about in the light of day, he came to her like he’d been when she last saw him, a stained white button down fluttering in the breeze.

But this Bellamy looked almost like a Grounder, with dark furs and armor.  And he carried a gun.  (Her Bellamy never carried a gun.  It was too much of a reminder of the choices  ~~they’d~~  she’d made.)

This Bellamy was real.

“How did you find me?” she asked, her heart pounding.

“I was sent to bring you back.  We need you,” he said, not answering her question at all.  He set his pack down heavily on the floor, his eyes still roaming her body like he expected her to disappear at any moment.

She crossed her arms and stepped back, unused to the presence of another person after all this time.  “Lincoln sold me out, didn’t he?”

Bellamy’s face transformed from shock to fury in record time.  “He  _knew_?  All this time, and he knew where you were?”

 _Oh._   Well, there was no point in lying now.  “He did.  I came here first, just for a few nights.  I was going to pack up and head to the ocean, but he convinced me this was better.”  She decided to leave out the fact that Lincoln had stopped by without fail on the last day of every full moon, leaving behind extra supplies.  He never spoke to her except for that dark January day when she was wracked with fever, and then he only brewed her a willow bark tea and made her promise to leave him a signal halfway back to camp the next day.  She also decided to leave out that some days she heard the guard scouting nearby and would scuttle up a tree and wait for them to leave, half hoping and half dreading that Bellamy would be with them.

Bellamy nodded slowly, his eyes still dangerous.  “So you’ve been a three hour walk from camp for three goddamn months and it never occurred to you to tell me you’re safe?”

“I said I was leaving,” she spat back.  “I couldn’t.”   _I couldn’t see you hating me like you do now._

Bellamy scowled and looked away, taking in the walls of the cave.  It was covered in her artwork, just like her cell in the Skybox.

She’d started with her dead first: her father and Wells, then Finn, then all the kids they lost in those first weeks.  Then she moved on to those she loved and lost–her mother, a woman who dedicated her life to saving people and now had a murderess for a daughter.  Raven.  Clarke killed her only family and even that didn’t save her from torture on two different occasions.  Monty, who should never have had to be a part of the Mount Weather decision.  Jasper, furious and grieving.  Octavia, betrayed and angry.  Anya, fierce and defiant.  She even painted Lexa, lounging on her throne in full warpaint, demanding everything Clarke had and giving nothing in return.

Bellamy’s painting was in a different part of the cave–a place where she didn’t have to look at him every day, even though he was constantly at the periphery of her vision, haunting her like even her ghosts didn’t attempt.  It seemed right to keep him separate from the rest.  After all, her feelings for him were so different from how she felt for everyone else.  The rest of Camp Jaha was grief and remorse in equal measure, but Bellamy?  He was pain and salvation and guilt and need and she wasn’t even sure where to begin to untangle them.

Bellamy’s eyes flickered around each painting and then back to her.  “Have you been eating?”  He bent over his pack and rummaged around.

“I have.  I had a rabbit a few hours ago,” she said, because apparently, they were changing the subject.

“You look like hell.  Lincoln didn’t think to bring you some spare rations?”  The edge to his voice threatened to slice her heart to ribbons.

“He did,” she snapped.  Anger was easier than anything else, so anger it was.  “It’s not his fault.  He brought what you could spare, and I had his winter stores here too.  I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.  You look like a Factory Station orphan.  Here,” he said and handed her a ration pack.  Her stomach betrayed her and rumbled loudly, so she gave in and ripped it open.

“Wait,” she said, her first bite almost to her mouth.  “Don’t you need this?”

Bellamy scoffed and sat down next to her fire.  “They gave me a month’s worth of rations for this mission.  I found you on my second night.  Eat.”

She did her best to eat it slowly, but she knew Bellamy saw through her pretense.  She sat across from him and stared into the flames, willing him to break the silence.  But he simply sat there, a dark, unreadable look on his face.

“How is everyone?” she asked finally, unable to take it any longer.

“Like you care,” he muttered, and Clarke broke.

“Like I  _care_?  Screw you.  Of course I care.  I care so much I can’t stand to see them,” she snarled, hoping her anger masked her sadness.

It didn’t, because his face immediately softened.  “Everyone is okay,” he said instead of apologizing.  (For that she was glad, because once they started apologizing she feared they would never stop.  There was just too much between them, mostly because of her.)  “Raven and Wick finally built her a new brace, but everyone had to put up with daily fights between them until they did.  Miller joined the guard and so did Monroe.”

“Monty and Jasper?” she prompted.

“Monty’s…okay.  They’re still not talking, but Jasper is cooling down, I think.  They’ll work it out.  And O and Lincoln are living together and training the guards, but you probably knew that already,” he said, anger creeping in on the edges.

“I didn’t.  Lincoln and I–we don’t really talk.  He just comes to make sure I’m alive.  He–he understands.”

“Understands what?  That you’d rather be a hermit than look at me ever again?”

Her eyes snapped to his across the flames.  “You know that’s not it,” she protested.

“Yeah?  You’ve been looking anywhere but me since I walked in.”  He took a deep breath and pressed his lips tightly together.  Bellamy took a bite of his ration pack and looked off into the dark.  “I’ve been seeing a Grounder,” he said bluntly.

“Good for you.  I kissed Lexa,” she threw back.

His brow knitted together.  “When?”

“Right before Mount Weather.”

“And why are you telling me this?”

Clarke shrugged and kept her face blank.  “I thought we were exchanging information.  You’re seeing a Grounder.  I kissed Lexa.  Your turn.”

“Her name’s Echo and she’s a biter,” he snapped, and all the fight went out of her.  Bellamy seemed to regret his words instantly, but there was no going back.

“I’m going to bed,” she declared.  There was no way she could sleep, but she couldn’t stand to listen to him for another second.  She banked the fire and climbed in to her pile of furs and ignored him as he rolled out his sleeping bag and settled in.

Nearly an hour later, she was no closer to sleep.  Bellamy was tossing and turning, and she knew from experience the thin, Ark issued sleeping packs weren’t well insulated against the cold cave floor.  On dirt they were sufficient, but the rocks clung to the cold like nothing else.  Clarke propped herself up on her elbow and sighed.  “Just come here,” she ordered.  Bellamy raised his head and looked at her but didn’t move.  “I know you’re freezing.  It’s cold in here.  Just–just don’t be stubborn.  Just this once.”

“It–it feels disloyal.”

“To her.”

“Yeah.  To Echo.”

“We’d just be sleeping.  She’ll understand.”

Bellamy nodded slowly and stood.  He slid under the stack of furs and turned his back to her and that was that.

**

Clarke woke the next morning to the slap of rain against rock.  Bellamy was already up, standing at the narrow entrance.  “Looks like an ice storm,” he said almost conversationally.  “We’re stuck here today.”

They didn’t speak all morning, and he threw her off with just his presence.  Before she would have chatted with Wells, maybe argued with her father about going home.  But none of them showed, not now that he was here, leaving her alone with her thoughts.  She was jittery, and stared at one of Lincoln’s books like she was reading while he unpacked and repacked his bag, seemingly just for something to do.

Clarke didn’t know how to end the silence, especially considering that she had slept better the night before than she had since she crawled into that cave, broken and alone.  She’d shivered through night after night, wishing that someone was next to her.  Sometimes it was Bellamy, hard muscles against her curves.  Sometimes it was Lexa, soft and pliable, pillowed against her.  Bellamy hated her and she hated Lexa but still she conjured them, night after night.  Having Bellamy there–real, solid, emanating more heat than she thought possible–meant she’d been warm for an entire night for the first time in months.

But the hard look on his face chilled her to the bone.

He shoved another ration pack into her hands halfway through the day, when the rain had fully turned to sleet, coating the trees.  “I’ll go check my snares when it lets up,” she said, handing it back.

“No, you’ll eat that.  I told you, I have a month’s worth with me.”

Clarke decided against a fight and started to eat, even though it tasted like ash, but halfway through she broke the silence again.  “You know why I had to go,” she said to her crossed legs.

“No.  I don’t think I do.  What we did in Mount Weather?  That was  _us_. Not you.   _Us_.  That means me too, you know.”  And here it was–the core of everything.  She wasn’t ready.  Not yet.  Because as long as she stayed in this cave she didn’t have to face the prospect of losing him entirely.

“It wasn’t you, though.  You–you didn’t want to.  I made you.  I did that, Bellamy.  Not you.   _Me_.”  A lump rose in her throat, awful and familiar.  “We pulled the lever but only because I gave up.  You never would have done that without me, so no.  It isn’t your fault.  It’s mine.”  She had spent weeks going over those last moments in the control center and always came to the same conclusion–it was her call.  Her choice.

Bellamy wanted to ease her guilt, but the blood was on her hands and hers alone.

“We did it together,” he repeated.  “You.  And.  Me.  Together.  That was the deal.  We save our people and we do it together, because the guilt is easier if you have someone else.  And then you  _left_.”

She couldn’t stand the sadness in his eyes.  Just like on the day she walked away, they threatened to drown her.  “Because I had to, okay?  I couldn’t stay.  I couldn’t watch you feel guilty for something  _I did_. And it wasn’t just Mount Weather, okay?  It was Finn, and Tondc too.”

“Tondc.”  He swallowed thickly and she watched his adam’s apple move up and down.  “Tondc was for me.”

“Of course it was.  If we evacuated, they would have  _killed you_.”

“I know.  So it was my fault too.”

“What?  No.  That was me.  Me and Lexa.  We made that choice.”

“Would you have made it if it was someone else in that mountain?”

Clarke hesitated. Saving Bellamy was instinct, not thought.  Would she have done it if it was a Grounder inside? She wasn’t so sure. “I didn’t–I didn’t think you would feel responsible for it.”

“Yeah, well, I do.  And maybe, if you hadn’t left, you’d know that.”

Clarke fell quiet again and picked at her food.  “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Bellamy scooted back and rested his head against the wall.  His wrists rested on his knees and he sighed.  “I know.  I am too,” he replied.  His eyes darted to the painting of Finn over her head.  “So you painted him.”

“I painted everyone, Clarke corrected.

Bellamy’s eyes fluttered closed, like he was in pain.  “Not me.”

Clarke jerked her chin up, surprised.  “Yes, you.”  She motioned with her ration pack.  “You’re over there.”

Bellamy looked and she watched his profile for a moment, realizing she’d forgotten about the small freckle near his ear.  “Where you can’t see me,” he noted.

Clarke jumped to her feet, furious.  “Yes.  Where I don’t have see you every day.  Because I hurt you.  Because you pulled that lever so I wouldn’t have to do it alone, and now you have their blood on your hands  _because of me_.”  She stood in front of him, her hands clenched.  “I can’t look at you because of what I did to you, okay?”  Her voice caught again and she forced down the sob.

Bellamy twitched and brushed a finger against her fist.  Clarke deflated and sank to the ground next to him and there they sat while the wind howled and the rain came down in icy torrents.  Eventually he shifted and draped his arm over her shoulder, drawing her close.

Clarke had spent three months assuming that if another person touched her, she would shatter into a thousand pieces.  She even snarled at Lincoln when she was ill, refusing to let him check her fever.  Maybe it was fitting that Bellamy was the first one to touch her after so long.  After all, he was the last one she’d held.  Just a hug and a kiss on the cheek, but that was the last human contact she had.  But Bellamy’s arm didn’t break her.  In fact, it felt like something she’d been missing had finally returned.

“Were you ever going to come home?” He asked, his lips pressed against the top of her head.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly.  “At first I meant to.  This was just going to be until I could stand it, until I could, I don’t know, look them in the eye.  But the longer I stayed the harder that seemed to be, so I just…I stayed.  It’s not so bad here.”

“You’re half-starved.”

“I’ll get better.  My snares catch something almost every day.”

“We need you, Clarke.   _I_ need you.  They put me on the council and every day they ask my opinion and I don’t know what to say.  That was never me.  I can’t do it without you.”

Clarke sighed and closed her eyes, because she couldn’t do it without him either.  But that just didn’t seem possible anymore.

Bellamy only moved when the only light left in the cave was their fire.  “We should eat something and go to bed,” he said, and for once it didn’t look like he was angry.

And that night he crawled under the covers with her and didn’t turn away.

**

Clarke woke before him the next morning and allowed herself a few moments to study Bellamy’s face.  She’d forgotten the scar between his eyebrows, and she realized she’d never seen him asleep before.  They’d woken each other up to handle crises back at the dropship, but she’d never really taken the time to observe him.  His brow was smoothed out and his lips parted.  Her fingers itched to twirl a lock of hair, to see if it was as soft as it looked.

She forced herself out of bed the moment that thought crossed her mind.  She pulled her bucket of water toward the fire, stoked the flames, and set it to boil.  Bellamy had gone out for water last night, against her protests.  “My gear is more waterproof than yours,” he said and disappeared out the cave entrance, returning with two full buckets.  Water droplets sparkled in his hair and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling at the memory.

Clarke grabbed her cape and moved to the entrance of the cave while she waited for the water to boil.  Lincoln had a small store of root tea, and while it tasted mostly like dirt she liked it on mornings like this, when the forest looked beautiful and welcoming instead of terrifying and forbidding.  It made her remember the time on the Ark when she was apprenticed to her mother.  Most of her warm memories of the Ark had to do with her father, but for a few months before everything went to hell, Clarke treasured her mornings with Abby.  Her mother would pour them both a small cup of instant coffee as they left for Medical, and they would take a long, twisting route to get there.  Sipping her coffee on that walk, off to learn how to save lives–that was the closest Clarke had ever felt to her mother.

Normally her father joined her while she sipped her tea and watched the world wake up, but with Bellamy nearby she knew he wouldn’t show.  A rustling noise in the cave made her turn her head.  She sat up from where she leaned against the entrance and watched Bellamy draw near, two small cans in his hands.  He had one of the furs from her bed draped over his shoulders and he smiled hesitantly.  

“Here,” he said, holding out both cans.  “Mind holding these?  One’s for you.”

A familiar scent hit her nostrils and she was swamped with the overwhelming urge to cry.   _Instant coffee.  From the Ark_.  She accepted the cans, which immediately started warming her icy fingertips.  “Move forward,” Bellamy said, and when she did he stepped behind her and sat down, his knees caging her body.

Without thinking Clarke leaned back against his chest and let him arrange the fur to cover them both.  He took one can from her and there they sat, sipping coffee and letting their warmth seep into each other.

“Why didn’t you make this yesterday?” she asked.

“I was pissed at you yesterday,” Bellamy replied, but there was no anger in his voice.  Just a hint of teasing that made her smile to herself.  “Will you come home with me?” he whispered, his lips at her ear.

She didn’t want to.  She wasn’t strong enough–seeing her people would break her, and she’d come so close to breaking so many times she didn’t know if she could survive it.  But she also couldn’t turn him away.  Not again.  So very slowly she nodded, and felt him let out a breath he was holding.

The forest looked like something out of a fairytale.  On the Ark, Clarke had never really understood what books meant when they talked about enchanted forests, but now she did.  The sun was bright and the ice was glittering, and despite the chill morning she was warm, inside and out.  They finished their coffee and set the cups down and Clarke settled back into Bellamy’s embrace.  His breath tickled her ear and neck and she gave herself five heartbeats to enjoy it, then ten, then twenty.

Then thirty.  Then she lost count, because it had been so, so long since she wanted something just for herself and in her heart, she was selfish.

But eventually the guilt reared its ugly head and she couldn’t let herself enjoy it anymore.  “Isn’t this disloyal?” she asked quietly.

Bellamy swallowed, then sighed, then cleared his throat.  “Yeah,” he agreed.  “It is.”

But still they stayed wrapped in each other until the sun shone high in the sky and the ice started melting.  Clarke stood and tightened her cape.  “I’m going to go check my snares,” she announced and headed into the quickly-thawing forest.  She hoped he didn’t see the way her hands trembled as she walked away.

When she returned–two rabbits this time, practically unheard of– Bellamy was packing.  Her heart fell and she almost dropped her kills.  Bellamy looked up and gave her a sad smile.  “I think I have to go talk to her.  Her village is about a half a day from here–I can be back by tomorrow if I leave soon.”

Clarke nodded, because she didn’t know what else to say.  Bellamy pulled several ration packs out of his bag and cast a critical eye at her before unloading two more.  “Please eat these while I’m gone, okay?”

She held up one of the rabbits that she was starting to clean.  “I’ve got these.  Want to wait while I cook one for you?”

Bellamy grinned at her.  “Look at you–you’re half Grounder these days, aren’t you?”  He sounded almost proud and she smiled back.

“So you’ll wait?”

He shook his head.  “I should go if I want to get there before dark.”

Clarke followed him to the entrance and wiped her bloody hands on her pants.  Bellamy paused and turned to her.  Before she knew what was happening he’d pulled her into a hug.  There was no giddy rush of joy, like the first time.  But there was no sadness like the second time either, just the comfort of his presence.  “I’ll be back tomorrow.  Will–will you still be here?” he breathed, and her heart threatened to crack at the doubt in his voice.

“I will,” she promised, her lips mashed against his collarbone.  “If you come back, I’ll be here.”

Bellamy pressed their foreheads together, letting their breath mingle in white clouds.  And then with a soft kiss to her forehead he was gone.

Clarke tried to keep her regular routine for the rest of the day–she brought more water up to the cave and set it to boil and roasted the rabbits, pairing one with a ration pack Bellamy had left her.  But she still felt jittery, and try as she might she couldn’t bring to mind someone to talk to.  She tried asking Wells what he thought about her cooking skills, but he never appeared.  Her father stayed silent, and Finn steadfastly refused to appear.  She tried burying her face in Bellamy’s side of the furs while she slept, desperate for a trace of him, but all she smelled was the usual mustiness of the hides.  She shivered again, spoiled by only two nights of his heat warming her under the covers.

The next morning was no better.  Clarke checked her snares, but they were empty.  She tried looked at her reflection in the ripples of the stream, but it wouldn’t stay still and she found herself stomping downstream to a small pool and frowning at the face that looked back at her.

She hadn’t looked at herself in months, and Bellamy was right–she looked like hell. Her cheekbones stood out after months of almost-hunger and the dark circles under her eyes looked like purple bruises against her pale skin.  She had tried to tame her hair but it was much longer and wilder than she remembered.  She sighed and climbed the hill back to her cave and returned with one last bucket that she hauled back to her fire and set to boil.

This time, she used the water to wash her face and then turned to her body.  She hadn’t been dirty, exactly, but she also didn’t have anywhere big enough for a bath and for the past few months bathing in the iced-over stream seemed like a one-way ticket to hypothermia.  She cleaned herself as best as she could and then dumped the bucket outside.

She looked the way Bellamy had left the day before, but there was still no sign of him.  Determined to keep herself busy she grabbed her paints and set to work on a painting of Raven and Monty bent over the scraps of a radio.

Like two nights before, she didn’t hear him enter.  She simply looked up and there he was, watching her with his pack at his feet.  She set her brush and paints down and walked towards him, ready to wrap her arms around his chest once more but he caught her face in his hands.

“Promise me,” he rasped in that low voice she had tried so hard to forget.  “Promise me that you won’t do this again.”  His dark eyes shone with unshed tears, just like they had outside the gates of Camp Jaha that awful morning.  “Because I can’t lose you like this. Not again.”

Clarke forced herself to look into his eyes, even though the pain threatened to swallow her whole.  “I promise,” she whispered and then he was kissing her, rough and soft all at once.

They fumbled with each other’s clothes, getting tripped up by buckles and zippers unfamiliar to their fingers while their lips stayed locked together.  Bellamy wrenched away and furrowed his brow, looking so annoyed while he worked at the buckles of her jacket that she laughed out loud.  His eyes darted to hers and looked at her in wonder.  “Do that more, okay?” he said.

Clarke turned her attention to the buckle and freed it for him.  “Do what?”

“Laugh,” he said simply and then drew her close, his hand cuffing the back of her neck and his lips moving against hers urgently.  She brushed her tongue against his and felt him melt against her.  Clarke slipped her hand under his shirt and sent it to join his jacket on the floor of the cave, shrugging out of her own jacket and toeing off her boots.

The cave was still damp and chill but Clarke didn’t feel it–the only thing left was the fire in her veins spurring her on as she traced the muscles of his chest.  She thought she knew Bellamy intimately, but with every square inch of skin she revealed she realized just how much she didn’t know.

She didn’t know he had a birthmark just over his left hip, and she didn’t know he would shudder when she scraped her fingernails down his back.  She didn’t think his muscles would ripple when she pressed an open-mouth kiss just above his heart and she never thought he could tug her up from where she took him in her mouth and whisper  _later, tonight I need to be inside you_ , but she was glad she knew these things now.  

Bellamy kept his weight off of her while he slid his fingers between her folds and stroked her until she fell to pieces, and he buried his head in the crook of her neck as he entered her.  His breath fanned her skin and he seemed to almost tremble with the effort of holding himself back until she dug her heels into his backside and urged him on.  Then he broke and pounded into her until she curled her nails into his shoulders and he came with a soft groan.

Clarke rested her cheek against his chest while he reached towards her woodpile and tossed another log on the fire.  “That’s handy,” she murmured.  “My arms aren’t long enough to do that.”

She felt him smile and kiss the top of her head.  “Good thing I’m sticking around then.”  They lapsed into silence and he played with the ends of her hair.  “I thought I heard you talking,” he said after several long moments.  “When I first got here the other day.  I was coming to use Lincoln’s cave for the night, and when I was a little ways away I thought I heard you…say something.”

“You probably did,” she admitted.  She rested her chin against his chest and looked up at him.  “I’ve been…I talk to people.  That I’ve lost.”

Bellamy held her gaze, no hint of fear or worry in his dark brown eyes.  Just understanding.  “Did it help?”

“It did.  I mean, at first, I thought I was going crazy.  But after awhile I think I realized that they were helping.  And I know they aren’t real.”

“Who was it?”

Clarke put her cheek back on his chest and started tracing idle patterns with her fingers.  “Um, Wells is around a lot.  He helps me with practical stuff–can I eat that, is that safe, that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like him.  I didn’t know him well, but he was smart, wasn’t he?”

“Smarter than me,” Clarke said, and decided not to wonder aloud what things would be like if Wells was still with them.  His loss still cut her deeply, but there was no going back now.  “And sometimes my dad shows up to tell me I have to work on things with my mom.  Or to remind me that he loves me.”  She smiled to herself.  “Anya even showed up once.  I got treed by a boar, and there she was on the branch next to me, yelling at me to stop being scared.  And Finn too, sometimes.  Just–sometimes I miss him, I guess.  Or how we were before everything got so screwed up.”

Bellamy rested his hand at the back of her head.  “Makes sense.”  He fell quiet again.  “I know why you put my portrait away from you, but–why did you pick that night?”

Clarke shifted so she was resting on her makeshift pillow and Bellamy turned to face her.  “I think it’s because it’s from before I knew you, and I wanted to, I don’t know…understand you better.  Things were so different then.”  She reached out and brushed a lock of hair from his face and made a decision.

“I didn’t just paint you there, though.  Here.”  She twisted and reached for the old book she’d been using as a sketchpad.  She sat up and the furs dropped to her waist and she saw Bellamy’s eyes dart towards her breasts and then back up to face.  He sat up and peered over her shoulder.  He squinted, then took the book from her and held it at arm’s length, frowning.

Clarke tried and failed to stifle a giggle.  “Are you farsighted?”

He cut his eyes towards her.  “A little.  I didn’t exactly have time to grab my reading glasses before trying to assassinate the chancellor and sneak onto the dropship, you know,” he said sourly, but his eyes were dancing.

Clarke leaned over and kissed his cheek while he frowned at the book again.  “Did you do these after I left yesterday?” he asked, referring to the tiny pencil sketches of him that littered the margins.  Bellamy, leaning languidly against a tree.  Bellamy, frowning in concentration like he was doing now.  Bellamy, sleeping on his stomach in her stack of furs, his broad, naked back bared to the waist.

Clarke shook her head and pointed to the tiny dates she placed under each sketch.  She lost track of the days pretty quickly, but she made sure she knew what month it was, at least.  

“January?” he asked and looked at her in disbelief.

“January, and December, and February, and March.  I think I ended up drawing you almost every night.  You never talked to me, but you were always here with me.”

“Why?”  His voice was hoarse and ragged and she had to lean over and kiss him fiercely to keep from crying.

“Because you’re a part of me.  You’re in my blood, in my veins.  I can’t get rid of you.  I tried you know, at the start.  To pretend like I didn’t see you watching me, protecting me.  But then I gave in.”

Bellamy smiled and tossed the book aside, pulling her down for a long, slow kiss.  “You won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon,” he assured her.

**

The next morning, Clarke woke to find him watching her with an indescribably tender look on his face.  “How long did you say they gave you to bring me back?” she asked playfully, kissing his chin.

Bellamy grimaced.  “I maybe–I didn’t exactly tell the truth.  There was no mission.”

Clarke leaned up on her elbow and raised one eyebrow.  “What?”

“There was no official mission.  They know I’m gone, but I kind of–I just left.  A month’s worth of rations was all they could spare, but they were mine anyway.  I just took them all at once.”

Clarke slapped his chest.  “Why the hell did you make me eat all those?  I just ate like three days’ worth of your rations,” she scolded.

Bellamy shrugged, unconcerned.  “Worth it.”

Clarke tried to scowl at him but eventually gave up and cuddled up next to him.  “So when do we leave?”

His fingers trailed down her spine, leaving goosebumps in their wake.  “I think we can wait until tomorrow,” he murmured.

And the next day, the sun was high in the sky when they reached the clearing before the tall gates of Camp Jaha.  Bellamy took her hand in his and squeezed comfortingly and she smiled back, trying to silently reassure him that she wouldn’t leave again.

They walked through the meadow towards the gate, side by side.

 Clarke steeled herself for what would come next.

Because they had work to do.

Together.


End file.
